Mr. Timothy

by Louis Bayard

  —“Hurry,” he says. More freight, he tells me. It’s all the same to him, I’m sure. Don’t worry hisself ’bout Adolphus, shiverin’ up on his box, coldest night of the year….

  We leave him there, inveighing against his fate. And whether he leaves off for want of an audience, or whether his sound goes the way of all sound, his voice does, in fact, dissipate after a few paces. How I miss it! With nothing to attend to now but the sound of our boots scuffing against the pavement, and the occasional shrouded carriage trundling past, it becomes all the harder to stave down this feeling…this feeling of what? Of being alone, I suppose. Irrevocably alone.

  For that is what we are, Colin and I, with our threadbare disguises, our knapsack full of tools, our barely concealed infirmities. By our own design, we have ventured into the griffin’s lair alone. May God guide us out again.

  Ah, yes. The bravado of two hours past has seeped away and left behind only loose fringes of possibility, unravelling even as I contemplate them. Perhaps, I think, perhaps it really would have been better to fall back on the vast institutional presence of Scotland Yard. And yet even at this moment of deepest doubt, I cannot trust men like Inspector Surtees with my holy work. For Inspector Surtees never knew Gully. He can never know this rage, this heat…scalding me through and through.

  O, Gully. If you could but reach down from whatever aerie you now occupy, part the fog before my eyes and show me all the things I long to know. How many of them came at you? Did you have time to cry out? And was he there? Lord Griffyn? Baring his golden fangs? Did he offer his card?

  And what of Philomela, Gully? Tell me why they spared her. Tell me what end they have in mind for her. Tell me.

  —Mr. Timothy?

  Colin’s hand is on my arm. He peers into my face, waiting for something to dawn.

  —What is it?

  —You can stop now. We’re here, ain’t we?

  We’re here.

  But Griffyn Hall registers to my dazed eyes as nothing more than an absence. Only after standing for some time before the front gate, only by letting my eyes relax into the mist, do I realise that this absence is, in fact, Griffyn Hall’s intention. From its very genesis, perhaps, before even the Griffyns arrived, the house was doubling back on itself, sprouting an arcade of beeches on each side and sequestering itself behind a short lawn. Forming itself into a tiny citadel of secrets.

  —You two! Move along!

  Standing before the gate, like a pair of Myrmidons muscling away the fog, are two representatives of the Metropolitan Police. Not on their usual rounds, that much is clear. They have been engaged to a specific purpose: to guard the citadel through the night.

  Old drinking mates of Rebbeck’s, very possibly. Or just as likely, two random specimens of corruption, plucked from the streets. Amazing now to think that in my weakness, in my dread, I contemplated calling in Scotland Yard. When they have already been called in.

  —What, deaf and dumb? I said, move along! Smart now!

  One of the Myrmidons takes a step forwards, jabs the air with his baton. Colin tips his cap and grabs my arm.

  —We was just leavin’, Officer.

  Passing from their range of vision, I murmur a prayer of thanks that Rebbeck himself was not manning the gates. God, it seems, has granted us this one favour. And a second favour, too, in the fog, which thoughtfully conceals the eastern side of Portland Place from the western. Simply by travelling on for ten paces and then crossing the street, Colin and I are able to retrace our steps without once being seen by the constabulary. And as we creep back towards our starting point, it occurs to me that the Myrmidons’ presence is the best possible sign. It means—doesn’t it?—that something is happening tonight at Griffyn Hall. Something the rest of the world isn’t meant to see. And unless my intuition plays me false, Philomela lies at the heart of it.

  Chapter 19

  WE ARE MORE CAUTIOUS ON OUR SECOND PASSAGE. Rather than broach Griffyn Hall from the front, we come at it sideways, through a neighbouring estate. Easy enough at first, just a quick hop over a low wrought-iron fence, a plunge into a high yew hedge…and then a new obstacle confronts us: the hedge itself, too dense to be breached. We feel our way along the branches, grasping for openings, the tiniest gaps, but they are too few and too small. In a panic, Colin seizes the butcher knife from the knapsack and begins hacking a passageway of his own. But the branches fight us at every step, scratching and clawing, retreating only to surge back again. It takes us ten minutes more to carve out an opening—an illusory one at that, for though it bids fair to admit us, it changes its mind once we are admitted, and only by crawling and scrabbling our way through do we at last emerge on the other side, roughly halfway down the lawn to Griffyn Hall.

  We crouch there, in our torn trousers, staring at a house that looks no closer than when we began. Indeed, from this vantage, it seems altogether more distant, an heirloom from the age of Palladio. Through the miasma, we see, some thirty feet away, a high flat white facade as sheer as a chalk cliff, topped by a dome one twentieth the size of the Pantheon’s and yet conceived on a grand enough scale to lend the entire building a colossal impression.

  Dismal to report: Griffyn Hall is no less a citadel on closer viewing than it appeared from the street. The only access I can espy is a flight of stairs running parallel to the house and climbing towards what looks to be a pedimented Greek-temple portico. Before we can apply ourselves to those stairs, though, we must first make peace with Griffyn Hall’s advance patrol: a row of statues running perpendicular from the house to the street. Greek nymphs, each a perfect duplicate of the others, all in flowing robes, with eyes that pierce the fog…and gaze directly at us.

  Fortunately for us, their marble enchantments have denied them a voice, so they make nary a peep as we crawl across the grass to them, and when we reach the middlemost maiden, she even presents her stone heel to us as a kind of good-luck charm (Colin takes the liberty of rubbing it) and her stone tunic fans round us, concealing us from both the Myrmidons on the street and the house itself, which now lies perhaps fifteen feet off.

  —Stroke of luck, whispers Colin.—I’ll take statues over dogs any day.

  And just then the curtain of fog parts to reveal not a dog but a far more fantastic sentry: an Indian peacock in full regalia, dragging its long train of turquoise and bronze feathers, each feather tipped with an iridescent eye, and each eye peering up at us with a baleful interest.

  The anomaly of him is almost too much. He should be mewed up this time of year, shouldn’t he? He shouldn’t have this profusion of feathers, not with the mating season so long past. Just our luck: a hothouse bird, following his own season. His train of feathers spills forwards, vibrating and shimmering, sending ripples of light into the grey.

  —What’s it doin’, Mr. Timothy?

  —He’s…I believe he’s courting us.

  Just then, the fog gives way to another cock—irresistibly drawn by the commotion and exploring us with the same degree of priapic interest as his companion. And then, right behind, yet another peacock, and then another, and still one more. An alien race, inexorably crowding in, with not a hen in sight, and no other end in view but us.

  Or rather, no end in view but my young friend. It is Colin whom the birds circle with their frank, appraising air. It is Colin for whom they flutter and flash and make their lovelorn entreaties.

  I whisper:

  —Do something.

  But their rustling is so loud by now that the boy’s appeals are barely audible, even to me.

  —Here, you got the wrong impression—I’m a bloke, I tell you…God’s truth, I’m a bloke….

  And still the birds close in, craning their heads, thrusting out their chests, sweeping their feathers higher and higher, and now Colin draws on a new fund of rashness. Jumping backwards, he claws open his trousers and, with wildly scrabbling hands, drags out the nearest available evidence of his sex. Holds it there in his hand like a pickled eel, freshly wrapped.


  Circling their inamorato, the cocks take turns inspecting the offering, and as they gaze, they draw back again, widening their circle as they go, and before another minute has passed, the first peacock has angled off onto his own tangent, in search of more promising love objects, and within another minute, the others have followed his example, ducking their heads and retracting their plumage and vanishing into the fog.

  Colin is the last to know. His eyes are welded shut, and his hand trembles beneath its pale cargo.

  —It’s all right, Colin. You may put that away now.

  —Oh. Thanks.

  And so we are alone once again. Alone in the mantle of night, afraid to draw breath, pricking our ears for the faintest reports of our discovery. But the silence only thickens and deepens round us as the night broods on, and this silence becomes to my ear more appalling than anything else. Huddled there by the hedge, I find myself longing for the scrape of a heel or the groan of a door.

  And at last, after a wait that feels like many days, I am met with a quick burst of sensation: a blaze of light in the portico.

  It is the former Sergeant William Rebbeck, holding a match to a cigarette. Long after the cigarette has been lit, he peers through that corona of light while the flame works its way down to his thumb and nestles against his skin and then, exhausted, blows itself out.

  A mere fifteen seconds of illumination, twenty at best, but enough to determine that the famous bowler is gone, replaced by a top hat of medium distinction and supplemented by a frock coat, a velvet collar, a large bow tie, and gloves of the downiest white. Willie the Slasher is hobbing with nobs tonight.

  Wonder enough, but there is an even greater wonder: apart from Rebbeck and the two policemen in front, not another soul is afoot, either at window or out of doors. Where is the butler? The liveried footmen? The hostlers and grooms? Can Lord Griffyn’s economizing have extended to ridding his house of help?

  Or have the servants of Griffyn Hall simply been given the night off?

  They were delighted to have it, I’ve no doubt. Seized their unexpected gift and never, in deference to their employer, taxed themselves wondering what would happen in their absence.

  By my watch, it wants only a few minutes to ten o’clock. Griffyn and his men will have many hours yet of protective cover. Many hours before dawn claws away the night, more hours still before the fog lifts.

  But there’s one thing to be said for this fog: it is too fickle to be yoked to one master. Even as it shields Griffyn Hall from the world’s scrutiny, it shields us from Griffyn Hall. We need only bivouac behind one of the marble maidens to be effectively hidden from view, and in this position, we might bide all night long, if necessary.

  Let us hope it won’t be. The air is frosting our bones, and my comforter is back in the cab, and the effort of sitting back on my haunches has set my chronically ailing knee to a rare pitch of protest. The only comfortable attitude, after a time, is to sit squarely on my buttocks in the damp, smeary grass and feel the cold steal its way up me.

  Just like the old dream. The paralysis, as the doctor foretold, rising through me, up the thigh and hip, through the lower vertebrae, the breastbone and lungs…all the way to the heart, vainly protesting….

  Colin nudges me, holds a flask to my mouth. It is a labour, prying these lips apart, but I am soon rewarded with an infusion of fire, and under its influence, I experience one last fit of shivering before the paralysis departs. All that remains is this throbbing purple ache, not comfort exactly but a kind of expectancy, faintly underlaid with hope—all I need, apparently, to weather the dogged passage of hours. That and the silent witness of Colin, who, though half obscured, is yet close enough for our breathing to coalesce.

  It is ten minutes to midnight when the sounds reach us. A carriage. No different at first from the usual clatter of hooves, but for the slow deceleration of wheels against slick macadam.

  Shaking off our listlessness, Colin and I rise to our knees. We hear the cry of a coachman, the answering cries of the Myrmidons. A carriage door opens…a pair of descending feet….

  And then, like a hand pulling away the fog, the voice of Willie the Slasher.

  —Good evening, your grace.

  Colin grabs my sleeve.

  Him?

  I shake my head. Not him. Only dukes are addressed as “your grace.”

  —’Evening, Rebbeck. Is Freddie receiving yet?

  —Waiting in the library, your grace.

  The front door is opened; a fusillade of feet issues forth. Griffyn Hall, it turns out, is not the abandoned hive it proclaimed itself to be. The bees have merely been biding their time, and here they come, a horde of drones, with droning voices to match—the flat, half-respectful monotones of clerks.

  —In here, if you please. That’s right. Bernard will take your coat, your grace. You know the way to the library, I expect?

  Four, five men—it is hard to disentangle their voices, and before long, new sounds are added to the welter. More carriages, each following hard on the last, each paying homage to the Myrmidons, each disgorging a new gentleman. And each gentleman receiving, from Rebbeck’s lips, his due honourific.

  —’Evening, Sir Reginald…Dr. Earnshaw! So nice of you to come….

  Lord Northdown, Baron Keble, Sir Leicester—Rebbeck’s old colleagues would be astonished to hear him so at ease among the gentry.

  The church bells strike the midnight hour—a symphony of chime—and still the carriages keep coming. I can hear them now, backed up halfway down the block, the horses quiescent in their harness, the coachmen impatiently tapping their crops. The delay is enough to goad some of the gentlemen into the heresy of letting themselves out of their own carriages. Converging at the front gate, they stroll up the front walk together, filling the air with their banalities.

  —Beastly business!

  —Not a night to be abroad.

  —Dog of a driver nearly struck an omnibus.

  —Mine will be given his notice before the year is out. One can’t go on like this….

  Rather than stay to hear themselves maligned, the coachmen, as soon as they have discharged their loads, tear off down the lane, clearing the deadlock as quickly as it formed. The street empties out again, and within another few minutes, the lawn, too, has emptied.

  Griffyn Hall, however, has sparked into life. Candles now burn from the front windows, shadows flit across the curtains, and through the ancient stones creep the sounds of holiday revelry: halloos of recognition, muffled shouts, a tinkle of glass.

  Screened by the marble maidens, Colin and I steal towards the house, feeling our way through the mist until we reach the staircase. There we crouch beneath a huge globe of a stair cap and peer up the stone steps. But the fog has thrown up a wall so dense that an entire cavalry might be sequestered there in the portico, and we would be none the wiser. And so we linger there by the base of the stairs, frozen by irresolution or, more accurately, by certainty. For I know, as sure as the breath on my hands, that Rebbeck is out there somewhere. Waiting.

  Have another cigarette, damn you!

  And in direct response to my prayer, a match flares up once again to reveal Rebbeck’s blunt, dogged profile—uncomfortably closer than last time—and the fixed outlines of two other men, likewise dressed beyond their station, and spaced on either side of Rebbeck before the portico entrance.

  No question of trying to slip by them. What, then, is left?

  Nothing, proclaim the frowning, implacable stones of Griffyn Hall. But as I gaze up into the murk, I discern for the first time a purchase: a cornice or ledge, about ten feet over our heads, running along the front of the building.

  Not much, but something. It seems to me if we can gain that modest height, we can lift ourselves out of Rebbeck’s ken and, more to the point, gain access to one of the windows—and if God so chooses, a stolen view of Philomela.

  But the ledge is quite high up, and reaching it will take some ingenuity. The best course I can see for us is
to climb onto the stair cap at the bottom of the steps and haul ourselves straight up.

  I mime my plan as best I can to Colin, and then I hoist myself onto the smooth stone globe. It is no easy task, finding my balance with a knapsack wrapped round me, but when I stand on my toes, I find I can just clasp my hands round the ledge, and after several trials, I can even swing my boot onto it. Several more trials later, I have prised my torso up, and soon thereafter, my fingers find a tiny crenellation in the house’s wall, which affords me enough leverage to lift myself to a standing position.

  Perched there on the ledge, I feel a ripple of pride. Hark the cripple boy. All those years of plying a crutch, not wasted after all.

  Colin is just barely visible below, poised on the stone cap and swinging his arms like an organ grinder’s monkey. Clearly, the gap between the staircase and the ledge is too great for him: he will have to make up the difference by leaping.

  And leap he does—hurls himself at the stone face. His fingers land just to the left of my boot; his body slams into the building. A grunt of pain breaks free from him as one hand clamps down on his bruised face, and the other lingers on the rim of the ledge. Four tiny fingers, clutching for all their worth and already losing their grip on the cold stone, sliding with agonising slowness towards the edge.

  They have given way altogether by the time my own fingers lock round them. The weight of him jerks my arm taut, nearly pulls me from my perch. It takes a pair of scarifying wobbles before I can regain my balance, but Colin has no balance to regain. He hangs suspended now, twelve feet from the ground. Gravity drags at his boots; blood smears his chin. And his free hand—I have just enough presence of mind to notice this—is shoved in his mouth to stifle the pain.

  From this charged silence emerges the sound of footsteps, passing down the portico and advancing down the steps towards us. Leading the way, that minute corona of match-flame, nestling against the callused skin of former Sergeant William Rebbeck.

  The fog has closed round us, but that oncoming light leaves little doubt: Colin’s hanging figure will be in full view once they reach us. Closing my eyes and uttering a silent orison, I draw three breaths…and then I haul upwards with all my might. My shoulders tremble with their burden; my chest swells with spent air; but Colin does begin to rise—in spasmodic hitches, like a piece of rickety scenery—and my labour is eased by the sight of his blood-smeared face heaving into view, his blood-smeared hand clutching the ledge with renewed authority.